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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25533556">this mad, gay nightlife</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Granspn/pseuds/Granspn'>Granspn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>MASH (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Episode: s09e14 Oh How We Danced, M/M, kissing dancing singing vera lynn, who could ask for anything more</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:42:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,221</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25533556</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Granspn/pseuds/Granspn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>episode tag for 'oh, how we danced' where margaret gets called away so hawkeye dances with bj in her place in peggy's place</p><p>"To know BJ was to like him; Hawkeye had discovered as much about thirty seconds after meeting him. But to love BJ was to want him to be happy no matter what, which meant Hawkeye could smile watching him dance with Margaret and watching her only appreciate a fraction of what was going on"</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>B. J. Hunnicutt/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, B.J. Hunnicutt/Peg Hunnicutt (referenced)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>64</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>this mad, gay nightlife</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">Watching BJ and Margaret dance made Hawkeye go out of his mind. It was something like grief and something like longing, which so often go together, but he didn’t know what he was grieving or who was more longing, him or BJ. But he didn’t do anything about it, because he’d never do anything about it, so he stood back, and watched BJ and watched Margaret, and they danced.</p><p class="p1">Soon Chi’s harmonica filled the room and haunted them all with the thought that they couldn’t have more. Couldn’t have more than one lousy kid playing music by rote, couldn’t have their real wives and children, couldn’t have little restaurants in Sausalito or candlelit dinners at home. They just had one harmonica, and Margaret Houlihan, and the stable’s worth of photographs lining the walls of Colonel Potter’s office.</p><p class="p1">And Hawkeye smiled as he watched them, because he loved them both. He loved Margaret for being able to give something to BJ, for being able to let him close his eyes and feel her hair and feel her against his chest and imagine for five minutes that he was anywhere but there. And even though if he leaned down he would smell Korea on Margaret’s skin instead of saltwater and fog and whatever it was Californian housewives smelled like it was still something,which was allegedly better than nothing. And he loved BJ because of course he loved BJ. To know BJ was to like him; Hawkeye had discovered as much about thirty seconds after meeting him. But to love BJ was to want him to be happy no matter what, which meant Hawkeye could smile watching him dance with Margaret and watching her only appreciate a fraction of what was going on.</p><p class="p1">Then the door burst open. Goldman. BJ stopped but didn’t shift his gaze; his eyes were still glazed over with something. Margaret startled and looked toward the door.</p><p class="p1">“Sorry, Colonel Potter, it’s your patient, Gorsky, with the infection. Kellye said we need you and Major Houlihan in the OR right away.”</p><p class="p1">“BJ,” Margaret breathed.</p><p class="p1">“Go, it’s fine,” he said with a measured smile, sending her off with a brush on the arm. She leaned back for one second to kiss him lightly on the cheek. Hawkeye could have sworn he saw a tear streaking down her face but in the next second her back was to him and Potter was out the door behind her. Since they’d stopped dancing, Soon Chi had stopped playing, and Father Mulcahy ushered him and his grandfather out, saying it looked like the party was over and they could use some rest. Wordlessly (and when had he ever done anything wordlessly?) Hawkeye moved from his spot by the file cabinet and placed his feet where Margaret’s had been moments ago. He put one hand on BJ’s shoulder, and the other in his hand. He saw Klinger (of all people) shift uncomfortably behind BJ, and look to Charles, who to his credit left with tact and a sympathetic pat on Hawkeye’s shoulder as he led Klinger out the door. BJ placed his free hand on Hawkeye’s hip.</p><p class="p1">“Looks like it’s just you and me, kid,” BJ said, sometimes into Hawkeye’s eyes and sometimes not, as his gaze darted all over his face.</p><p class="p1">“Know anything really swinging?” Hawkeye said. When Hawkeye stood up straight, he really was almost as tall as him, which shouldn’t have surprised BJ, but it did. He didn’t usually dance with someone he could look in the eye.</p><p class="p1">Hawkeye started to hum something, the first tune that popped into his head. At first, neither of them recognized it. Slow and low, after a moment they realized it was a melancholy “We’ll Meet Again,” and laughed as BJ sang the words, his voice gravelly, the tune only just carried. But he started leading them around the room. It wasn’t a real step, just wherever he could manage to make his legs take them without buckling.</p><p class="p1">“<em>And won’t you please say ‘hello,’ to the folks that I know, tell them I won’t be long,”</em> BJ tried to sing without the lyrics catching in his throat. Hawkeye squeezed his hand and took an impossible step closer. And BJ kept leading them. Gently, more gently that he would have thought possible if he hadn’t seen the delicate way he was able to stitch people together in worse shape than he was now, Hawkeye pulled their bodies together until they weren’t so much dancing as hugging in motion. And Hawkeye put his head on his shoulder, and he smelled like Korea and Maine, like sweat and dirt and saltwater from an ocean BJ had never seen, never wanted to see until now. A man who makes you want to leave the West Coast is hard to find. A man who makes you want to see the Atlantic because of how he smells in Korea should earn you a Section 8, BJ thought, as he felt Hawkeye’s breath on his neck and knew that meant he was thinking about how <em>he</em> smelled. He wondered if he made Hawkeye want to see the Pacific.</p><p class="p1">“Close your eyes,” Hawkeye mumbled into his neck.</p><p class="p1">“What?”</p><p class="p1">“Close your eyes,” he said, lifting his head at looking at BJ. His gaze shifted almost imperceptibly from his eyes to his lips, or so BJ thought, but Hawkeye looked at everybody like that. It was just how he sized you up. “I want to give you something,” Hawkeye finished.</p><p class="p1">“I already got your present,” BJ said, gesturing to the room at large, to the banner he knew Hawkeye’d painted himself.</p><p class="p1">“Humor me,” Hawkeye said, “Close your eyes.” So BJ did.</p><p class="p1">Hawkeye had been thinking about this moment since the O.R., since “you’ll have to shave.” (He’d been thinking about it longer than that.)</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">(He’d been thinking about it since their first real fight, straight off the heels of their first fake fight. Since BJ told him he was <em>perfect</em> even as a joke and since he’d said he’d let him get the last word and didn’t, even as a joke. Since he’d looked at BJ with enough <em>fuck me</em> in his eyes to make Radar leave without being told to. Since he’d heard his heart beating in his ears and felt more adrenaline in his system than he knew what to do with. Since he kissed him in the Swamp when anyone could have come in and when BJ kissed him back out of instinct or desire, he couldn’t tell. Since he’d moaned into BJ’s mouth in a way that was more involuntary than sexy. Since BJ bit his lip and pulled away.</p><p class="p1">Since, “Leave it to you to get the last word even when your tongue’s in my mouth,” was the last BJ said about it.)</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">(He’d been thinking about it since they got back from that General’s office, the one who wanted BJ arrested because of Bardonero’s prank, drunk as hell and high on getting justice. Since they’d both collapsed on his cot in a fit of giggles and he’d leaned over to him without thinking.</p><p class="p1">Since, “BJ, baby.”</p><p class="p1">“Yo.”</p><p class="p1">“Kiss me.”</p><p class="p1">Since he’d leaned over and kissed him and since BJ had humored him for a minute, let him taste him for a minute before placing a hand on his chest and delicately letting him down.</p><p class="p1">Since, “Okay, Hawk, that’s enough.”</p><p class="p1">Since BJ had climbed over him and into his own bunk but not before loosening his tie and dusting off his filthy Class A and carefully laying a blanket across him, since Hawkeye had laid there not being able to tell which of their tongues the scotch he could taste had come from.)</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">(He’d been thinking about it since BJ had freaked out about sleeping with that nurse, since he hadn’t worked up the courage to ask why it wasn’t cheating when it was with him.)</p><p class="p2"> </p><p class="p1">He finally stopped thinking. He’d never been so sober but he was completely drunk with something else. He kissed him softly, parting BJ’s lips with his. He ran a hand along his cheek and breathed him in for one more moment before pulling back and letting his hand fall to BJ’s chest. He didn’t say anything. BJ, ball, court, something like that. His eyes were still closed.</p><p class="p1">“Nice try,” BJ said, “but you don’t taste anything like her.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh yeah?” Hawkeye said, scanning BJ’s face frantically for a hint of an expression. But his face was frozen like it always was, in the contented little suburban half-smile of someone who’d never been profoundly and achingly miserable before. “What does she taste like?” <em>You inscrutable bastard</em>.</p><p class="p1">“Sweet,” BJ said with a soft exhale. Then his eyebrows furrowed like he was trying to remember a specific kiss. “Like spearmint toothpaste. And lipstick. And chamomile tea.”</p><p class="p1">Hawkeye blinked. Two out of those three were sacrifices he was ready to make in a heartbeat.</p><p class="p1">“What do I taste like?” Hawkeye asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.</p><p class="p1">BJ licked his lips, like that wasn’t a ridiculous thing to do. Like it wasn’t ridiculous to acknowledge that Hawkeye had just kissed him seconds after he’d told him what his wife’s kisses tasted like.</p><p class="p1">“What do you think?” BJ said, so close to laughing Hawkeye found it viscerally painful. “Bitter. Coffee and gin. And sweat!” BJ barked a laugh and finally opened his eyes. Hawkeye softened on sight.</p><p class="p1">“That sounds terrible,” he said quietly, pinching the fabric of BJ’s henley between his fingers.</p><p class="p1">“It’s not so bad,” BJ said. He cupped Hawkeye’s cheek in his hand. It was rough. They were in the army; he should have shaved days ago. Under his palm he felt Hawkeye swallow.</p><p class="p1">“You would risk a dishonorable discharge over a lousy anniversary present?” BJ asked. Hawkeye didn’t answer. He just kissed him again. So he did answer, in a way.</p><p class="p1">This time it wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t rough, either, it was just… desperate. It was hungry. And it tasted like burnt toast from the mess tent and whiskey from Potter’s stash and things BJ had never tasted before, like cotton candy from a New England boardwalk and sausage and mushroom pizza from the East Village and guilt and sweat and saltwater and bitterness, and anger and fear and homesickness and wanderlust and BJ knew he was projecting but he couldn’t stop because it tasted <em>good</em>. When Hawkeye broke the kiss he was practically panting.</p><p class="p1">“First of all,” Hawkeye said, taking deep, shaky breaths as he spoke, “there is so little I wouldn’t risk a dishonorable discharge over. I’m basically bucking for one, and they won’t give it to me because according to their calculations the casualty count will go up if they send me home. I should never have gone to medical school, seriously. Second of all, you can’t possibly still think that’s all this is. You can’t really be that naive. Maybe it’s better if you did, since it might save us something like time or heartbreak, but you know this is not just an anniversary present. Margaret might be able to be your stand in for Peg but I’m not. Beej, I’m something else.”</p><p class="p1">“Hawkeye, please,” BJ said, grabbing him by both shoulders, “You are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. You’re perfect.”</p><p class="p1">“I know you are but what am I?”</p><p class="p1">“Shut up. I love you. And I love Peg. And it eats me. And you’re right, I can’t close my eyes and pretend you’re her, but when it’s you I don’t want to. And that eats me, too.”</p><p class="p1">Hawkeye shook himself from BJ’s grasp and practically fell onto a chair behind them. BJ knelt down in front of him and gingerly placed a hand on his knee. Hawkeye didn’t move it, but he also didn’t look like he felt it.</p><p class="p1">“Can you love both of us?”</p><p class="p1">“I already do.”</p><p class="p1">“But can you live with yourself?”</p><p class="p1">“I already do.”</p><p class="p1">“But you said–”</p><p class="p1">“I love you,” BJ said, leaning in close and surprising Hawkeye with a swift kiss, “And Peg will understand, she’ll have to understand,” he kissed him again, “that I’m not who I was when I left.” He kissed him again and kept kissing him. </p><p class="p1">“BJ, don’t say that,” Hawkeye said, pulling back during a brief pause for air, “I know you’re afraid you’ll be a stranger when you go back.” BJ leaned in to kiss him again but Hawkeye stopped him with a hand on his chest, “I can’t be the reason you feel like that. I can’t be the one to ruin your life like that.” He swallowed. “I love you too much.”</p><p class="p1">“The only way you could ruin my life is by leaving. I need you too much.”</p><p class="p1">“Oy,” Hawkeye said. He didn’t think of himself as someone people needed, not besides maybe some patients on his operating table. He needed people, sure, he was about as needy as they come. But everybody he needed was fine without him. Dad, Trap, Carlye, Radar, even Margaret for God’s sake. And they’d tell them they loved him, or that he was all right, anyway, and they’d say it in their own way if not in so many words and they’d leave or stay while he left. Nobody had ever really needed him before, and certainly not someone he needed as much as BJ.</p><p class="p1">“What is it?” BJ asked.</p><p class="p1">“You don’t need me,” Hawkeye said, running his hand down BJ’s chest and setting in down in his own lap. “You like me, you probably even love me– and who wouldn’t– but you don’t… come on, Beej, you don’t–”</p><p class="p1">“Hawk, of course I need you. We all need you. God, what do you think this place would be without you?”</p><p class="p1">“What it is when I’m here. Korea.”</p><p class="p1">“Would you not be intentionally dense for fifteen seconds? Every letter I get from home Peg tells me how lucky I am to have you. To have someone who sees the world, the war, for what it is. To have someone who doesn’t do things unless there’s a good reason, who doesn’t just do what he’s told ‘cause he’s told to. You always think you’re going crazy, Hawk, but you’re the only sane one here!”</p><p class="p1">Somewhere when BJ was talking, Hawkeye started crying. At first it was silent, tears that come fast and hot and there’s nothing you can do to stop them, but by the time BJ finished Hawkeye was shaking with breathy sobs that it took all his leftover energy to keep quiet.</p><p class="p1">“You’re okay, Hawk, you’re okay,” BJ said, pulling him into a tight hug. He cradled his head in his hand, running his fingers through his hair, thick, and black, and thoroughly against regulation. Eventually he felt Hawkeye stop shaking, his breath steady.</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me,” Hawkeye said, extricating himself from the hug and facing BJ.</p><p class="p1">“Nothing,” BJ said, wanting nothing more than to reach up and wipe the tears from Hawkeye’s cheeks, “You’re scared. You’re tired. You love me. All perfectly understandable.”</p><p class="p1">“Maniac,” Hawkeye said, but he laughed while he did.</p><p class="p1">“Maine maniac,” BJ said.</p><p class="p1">“Hawkeye Pierce, the main Maine maniac.”</p><p class="p1">“Triple M.”</p><p class="p1">“Mmm,” Hawkeye said. “The M stands for ‘mobile.’”</p><p class="p1">“Don’t remind me. Hey,” BJ said, “Can I kiss you?”</p><p class="p1">“I wish you would,” Hawkeye said.</p><p class="p1">So he did. And before BJ knew it, they were both on the floor, tumbling over each other like kids playing at wrestling, except they were in the Colonel’s office, knocking his desk around, sending papers flying all over the floor and threatening to tip over the projector and all of Peggy’s film. And he didn’t really know what he was doing but he knew enough to make it good and make it last a little while. And afterwards they laid on the floor of the office, Hawkeye’s head on BJ’s chest, BJ’s hand in Hawkeye’s hair, and they looked at each other and laughed because they had to clean up the enormous mess they made but they knew they had hours because Potter was in surgery so they laid there for another minute before rising in silent tandem and starting to straighten things up. </p><p class="p1">And they kissed as they cleaned and BJ didn’t know how he felt about it because it was so domestic, tidying the office together. And Hawkeye had said he didn’t want to just be a stand in for Peg and BJ had told the truth when he agreed there was no way he could be, but when he kissed him and tasted his dried tears it was hard to tell what ocean the saltwater tasted more like. He was discovering just how possible it was to be in two places at once. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t mind it, and he rationalized beyond rationality that if half of him really was still at home then it wasn’t really cheating if the other half was here or in Maine or inside Hawkeye Pierce or at the bottom of the Sea of Japan.</p><p class="p1">When they’d cleaned the office within an inch of how it had been before, they lingered by the door. </p><p class="p1">“We should do this again sometime,” BJ said.</p><p class="p1">“I’ll be sure to call you before my next nervous breakdown.” </p><p class="p1">They kissed again, in between the windows in the office doors, and walked to the Swamp hand in hand. Hawkeye didn’t know what people would think if they saw. Half the time he thought he was about thirty seconds away from being arrested on any number of charges. The other half he thought the people here had seen too much shit, from him especially, to ever seriously try to get him sent home.</p><p class="p1">The tent was empty when they got back; Charles was on duty in post-op. Hawkeye leaned up to kiss BJ again but stopped when he saw a faraway look in his eyes.</p><p class="p1">“Hey, Beej,” he said softly, “Where are you?”</p><p class="p1">BJ sighed. “I don’t know, Hawk. I’m here, with you. And I’m there, with her. And I want to be home more than anything in the world. Would you hate me if I said I would give you up if it meant I could go back?”</p><p class="p1">“I could never hate you,” Hawkeye said, even though it hurt. It hurt because he’d thought it a million times himself. It was odd, but he was almost sure he would give up anything if it meant the war would never happen. He knew that meant giving up the people he’d loved more than anyone else he’d ever met. It was an odd place to be that he would give anything in the world not to feel as loved as he did in that moment, but he would, if it meant erasing the war. And the catch was, you had to be crazy not to feel that way. That was some catch.</p><p class="p1">“I’m gonna get you home,” Hawkeye said, pulling BJ close to him again. He laid him in his cot and draped his blanket over him, and kissed his temple, and whispered again, “I’m gonna get you home.” </p><p class="p1">The next morning Hawkeye asked Klinger what he’d have to trade to get his hands on some spearmint gum and chamomile tea. He was gonna get him home, one way or another.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>hope you enjoyed it!! these characters are so fascinating to me and they have such a life of their own that i feel like i'm watching the story unravel as i write, so also these kind of get away from me and idk what im doing really. but that's life!</p><p>if u want to say hi i do my mashposting @crickelwood on tumblr :)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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